This article develops a framework to explain ideological diversity within political parties in parliamentary democracies from the positions of individual legislators. First, it reviews the different theories explaining the variation of ideological diversity within political parties in the field of party politics and legislative studies, then proposes to model the relations between legislators, their party and their constituents as a competitive delegation process building on the principal-agent theory. The article draws on the literature on the distribution of power within political parties to argue that intra-party ideological diversity can best be explained by vertical bargains taking place between the different territorial layers of political parties.
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